Boswell tells us that he once offered to teach Dr. Johnson the Scotch dialect, that the sage might enjoy the beauties of a certain Scotch pastoral poem, and received for his reply, “No, sir; I will not learn it. You shall retain your superiority by my not knowing it.” It would not be true to say that Dr. Johnson’s indifference to the Scotch language and to Scotch poetry has been shared by all cultivated Englishmen, but it has certainly been shared by a very large majority in every generation. The superb merit of many of the Scotch ballads, the lyrics of Burns and the novels of Scott have practically done little to diminish this majority and to induce English readers to acquire the knowledge which Dr. Johnson disdained. Nine Englishmen out of ten read Burns, either with an eye uneasily fishing the glossary at the bottom of the page, or _ad sensum_, that is, in contented ignorance of about three words in every nine. And this is, perhaps, all that can reasonably be expected of the Southerner. Life is short; the world of Scotch drink, Scotch religion and Scotch manners is not, as Matthew Arnold observed, a lovely one, and the time which such an accomplishment would require would be far more profitably spent in acquiring, say, the language of Dante and Ariosto, or even the language of the _Romancero General_ and of Cervantes. A modern reader may stumble, with more or less intelligence, through a poem of Burns, catching the general sense, enjoying the lilt, and even appreciating the niceties of rhythm. But this is not the case with the Scotch of the fifteenth century--the golden age of the vernacular poetry, the age when poets were writing thus:-- “Catyvis, wrechis, and ockeraris, Hud-pykis, hurdaris, and gadderaris, All with that warlo went; Out of thair throttis thay schot on udder Hett moltin gold, me thocht, a fudder As fyre-flawcht, maist fervent, Ay as thay tumit them of schot, Feyndis fild thame new up to the thrott With gold of allkin prent.”